Making a Worm Plunger (by The Little Veggie Patch Co)

Here is an extract from the latest book from the The Little Veggie Patch Co. It’s called DIY Garden Projects, and here’s one I’ve selected just for you (and me) – it’s called the Worm Plunger…

WORM PLUNGER ‘Built it and they will come’

Conventional worm farms and composting bins are plagued by a few problems. For one, they can be unsightly, hulking objects that take up valuable garden real estate. Another issue is that pests easily infiltrate them. A lot of compost bins are open at the bottom, which means that any motivated rat with a little initiative need only to dig a couple of centimetres to reach a sumptuous vegetarian buffet.

Such nefarious activity was, in fact, a cultural highlight in a previous sharehouse. There, my housemates and I used to gather around the kitchen window every evening and watch a pair of rat bachelors fight it out for nightly control of the compost bin. Oh, how I miss Scabs and Snaggletooth …

Rather than building rat colosseums we prefer to build worm apartments, and so the idea for the worm plunger was born. A worm plunger is nothing more than a plastic bin or bucket buried underground, which, so I’ve heard, is where worms like to live. We drill holes in the walls of the plunger to facilitate movement and it has a cap, which can be removed to add compost.

While this system is smaller than a conventional worm farm, it has the benefit of being both discreet and difficult to infiltrate. The added benefit of being underground is that temperatures are normalised so worms will be at their most productive.Once it’s full, you can either remove and spread the worm castings around your patch or simply slide the bucket out of the ground and move the infrastructure to another part of the garden.

This extract is from The Little Veggie Patch Co’s DIY Garden Projects by Mat Pember & Dillon Seitchick-Readon, published by Hardie Grant Books and available now where all good books are sold. To purchase your copy online, click here.